Like this:

A PASSPORT TO THE WORLD: EXPEDIA AND THE PASSPORT PARTY PROJECT HELP TEEN GIRLS OBTAIN FIRST PASSPORT

— Six Passport Party participants, aged 11-15, will then take first-ever trip abroad, sponsored by Expedia.com —

Bellevue, WA(BlackNews.com) — Expedia.com, the world’s leading online travel agency, announced today that the company will serve as the official travel sponsor of The Passport Party Project. The Passport Party Project is a philanthropic initiative started by award-winning travel blogger and entrepreneur Tracey Friley, founder of OneBrownGirl.com and OBG Adventure Camps. The Passport Party Project hosts parties for ten girls each throughout the United States, giving teen girls, aged 11-15, the tools to obtain their first passports. The goal is to inspire these girls to use their passports to ultimately take their first-ever trip abroad. Read more…

By NICK CHILES

After a number of years (or decades) as a grown-up, most of us probably assume we got the whole condom thing figured out. Don’t exactly need to be a doctor to understand how it works. But it turns out that using a condom is a lot more complicated than I realized—which makes appropriate sex education for young people even more important.

The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University analyzed 50 studies from 14 countries over 16 years and found that when it comes to using condoms, adults are kinda clueless. Check out the following list of errors for using a condom (which are 98 percent effective—when used correctly) and ask yourself, being completely honest, whether you do it right, every time. Ask yourself if you even knew you were supposed to be doing all of these things, every time. Then ask yourself how much fun (Not!) it would be to go over each one of these steps with your adolescent son or daughter, as part of the “sex talk.”

So way back when I started this blog, I promised you some creative stuff thrown in among my rants and reads, and did indeed post some of my prose and poetry.

I haven’t kept up with that promise lately though, have I? I know. I suck. Fuck off.

I wrote this piece tonight, inspired by someone very dear to my heart…who I just confound at times with my “West Indian Woman” tendencies. (Yep. I’m an island girl. Born and raised in the South Bronx, of British Jamaican heritage. I am where Park Avenue and Halfway Tree meet, baby!)

This is in tribute to all the headstrong island girls like me, the prideful mothers, the strong wives, and determined single girls. Sisters, it’s in our genes. We can’t help it. But it’s also in tribute to the men who have to deal with us: we know…we know…